Historic Japanese spacecraft returns

After a mammoth 4 billion-mile journey over seven years, a Japanese space probe has returned to Earth, landing in the Australian outback. On board it carried an unique cargo: a capsule containing a sample of dust from the asteroid Itokawa.

The Hayabusa probe blazed a spectacular trail over Australia before slamming into the desert.

Yoshiyuki Hasegawa a scientist at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency has said: "The parachute deployment is a wonderful situation for us."

Local Aboriginal elders and scientists flew to the site by helicopter to verify that no sacred sites had been damaged. A defence spokesman said the indigenous leaders had cleared the way for the capsule to be recovered.

Hayabusa, which means falcon in Japanese, left Earth in 2003, landing on the irregularly shaped asteroid in 2005. and scientists think it managed to pick up a small sample of material.

Scientists hope it could unlock secrets of the solar system's formation and shed light on the risk to Earth from asteroid impacts.

Planetary scientist Trevor Ireland says the dust sample could reveal a "missing link" between asteroids and meteorites that fall to Earth.

Analysis of the capsule's contents will be carried out in Japan and is expected to take at least six months.